D’Angelico Guitars “As Good As It Gets”

As many of you already know, Bill Comins’ guitars are among the finest archtops on the planet. I feel that they come the closest to achieving the elusive sound of vintage archtops by Gibson and D’Angelico with loads of power and projection while maintain a warm sweetness that most of today’s archtops fail to capture. With this in mind, Golden Age is proud to announce that we are now dealers for D’Angelico guitars who have recently brought Bill onboard as a consultant to redesign the guitars in their line so that they more closely reflect the sound, design and aesthetic of John D’Angelicos original masterpieces. According to bill “all of us here at D’Angelico are quite serious about the D’Angelico legacy and have a great deal of reverence for who John was and where he was going with his designs.

The most obvious change on the Excel EX-SS is that it has gone from a laminate Spruce top to a laminate Maple top. This improves the instruments sustain and allows for a clearer more detailed sound. Also the top carving is more heavily dished which results in a louder more acoustic sound. Another change is that the original solid block was scaled down to a shorter block that sits directly under the bridge resulting in a lighter more resonant guitar. The fretboard has been beefed up from 6mm to 7 mm and the neck profile has been slightly beefed up as well. The body joins at the 16th fret rather than the 15th giving some additional access to higher frets. And, in general, all the build tolerances are now more precise than they had been. The rest of the changes are largely cosmetic: engraved shield on headstock, more defined engraving on gold plated tailpiece, new wooden knobs with Deco design, new binding pattern and smaller headstock. The EX-DC has undergone similar changes except that it has retained its laminate Maple top and full interior body block.

While Bill has been putting in a lot of time and energy on the D’Angelico project, he is still devoted to his regular hand crafted line, which remains among the best line of guitars you will ever play.